Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Latest By
Category:
Armor
Artificial
Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual
Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work
"There's no point in making a mistake unless you understand the mistake so that you don’t make it again."
- Alfred Bester
 |
| Robots Take Human Jobs | ||
| Robots displace human beings in the workforce. |
Fear of automation has been around since the Luddites, if not earlier, but this is an early and explicit use of the idea in science fiction.
| He thought that he was living in a world in which the conflict between the machine robots and the worker was so intense that unemployment was serious problem. In practically every phase of life the machine was crowding the workingman out of his job. The robots were selling tickets in the subway stations, directing traffic, digging ditches, building new skyscrapers, forming new and unheard of additions to the army and navy. And some of them, connected to adding machines, and to typewriters in large offices were actually keeping sets of books and doing part of the stenographic work in a purely mechanical way by very capable machines. In these dreams, Ball saw the gradual starvation of society, first, for the real pleasures of life, then, for the comforts, and later on for the actual necessities. He visioned parades of unemployed workingmen, demanding of capital a right to earn a living. But these very parades were policed by robots with blue-coats on who were very perfect in preserving order by mechanically-wielded batons... Labor was united in denouncing the entire programme of so universally substituting machines for men. But, in spite of this opposition, the money men who controlled the new companies, such as Robots International, Television, and Radio, were determined to go on with their programme and perform the manual labor of the world with electrified machinery in the shape of men and women, who would be tireless, errorless and wageless. |
| Technovelgy from The Threat of the Robot,
by David H. Keller. Published by Science Wonder Stories in 1929 Additional resources -
|
A more positive version of this idea can be found in Paradise and Iron by Miles J. Breuer, published in Amazing Stories Quarterly (1930):
Automatic machinery, of course! Wealth consists of the products of labor, but it has been measured in terms of human labor. Here the people had control of vast amounts of labor, labor that knew no fatigue, had no limitations, required no wages — the labor of automatic machinery. They had freely at their disposal the equivalent of the labor of millions of skilled and powerful workmen, without involving the degradation of a single human soul in the monotony of toil. As a result, all the people were able to devote themselves to the higher pursuits for which men have longed in vain during the ages when necessity compelled them to labor.
Here was another Athens! Here was a nation that had developed intellect and beauty to a degree that bid fair to rival that of the old Grecian city. However, in that Athens of old, which has done so much to mold the thought and taste of the world, there was a sad moral blot. The leisure that made possible the accomplishment of its artists, statesmen, and thinkers, was achieved only through the labor of millions of slaves. Of these toiling, driven, suffering multitudes, history has nothing to say, nor of the share which they deserve in the glory of Greece
In this modern Athens there was no such disgrace. The slaves doing the drudgery behind the scenes were not human beings, but machines — not the lives of a hundred human beings sacrificed to make possible one sculptor or philosopher, but only iron and oil, gasoline and electricity making beauty: the beauty of human bodies well and gracefully nurtured; the beauty of paintings, statuary, and music; the beauty of high and noble human thought.
How was it possible for this one city to produce such an immense and wonderful collection?
Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |
Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Threat of the Robot
More Ideas
and Technology by David H. Keller
Tech news articles related to The Threat of the Robot
Tech news articles related to works by David H. Keller
| Warfare Goes Underground In Ukraine |
| The Wind Phone Calls Those Who Have Passed On |
| Instant Journalists: Ordinary People With Cell Phones |
| Meta's Horizon Studio's Unique Avatars From Text Prompts |
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a
quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add
it here.
| <Previous | Next> |
|
|
|
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Science Fiction Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
|
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
'Our planes are going to start bringing in bales of discarded plastics...'
'... completely forgetting the ship at sight of the awesome figure and great head of the giant Gaut...'
'So, Ender, we will now begin your education.'
'What strange sensitivity! What an amazing development of science was manifested in every move and act and word of this Robot!'
'Forget the head atop it, the legs below, feet, arms, hands. It compels erasure.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair or to perch on a flagpole in imitation of a giant bird, even in the windy city of Chicago.'
'The thirty-odd miles of The Factory’s circumference...'
'Wandering mines, you took them out on the edge of the desert, set them down and activated them.'
